


Ruslan and Lyudmila

by chaturastarlight



Category: 12 Dancing Princesses (Fairy Tale), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Fairy Tale Retellings, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 05:13:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20558813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaturastarlight/pseuds/chaturastarlight
Summary: The Red Room retold with a fairy tale- The Twelve Dancing Princesses.





	Ruslan and Lyudmila

There was a king- or rather a man who believed himself a king- who had twelve beautiful daughters. They slept on twelve mattresses all in one room and when they went to bed, the doors were shut and locked up. However, every morning their shoes were wet through as if they had been outside all night, and yet none of the guards could figure out how it happened, or where they had been.

The man made it known to all his men, that if any could discover their secret, and find out where the girls went at night, that man would be allowed to choose which girl was to die; but if they did not succeed, every three days one guard should be put to death.

One of the younger guards came in the evening and stayed in the room next to the girls. There he sat and watched from the window where they went at night; and, in order that nothing might pass without his hearing it, the door of the room was left open, as well as the window. But the guard soon fell asleep in the biting cold; and when he awoke in the morning, he found that the girls had escaped yet again, for their shoes were filled with water. The same thing happened the second and third night: so the man ordered his head to be cut off. After him came several others; but they had all the same luck, and all lost their lives in the same manner.

Now it chanced that a soldier, who had been wounded in battle and had to relearn how to fight, passed through the base where this man reigned: and as he was brought into the facility he met a young girl, who asked who he was. “I don’t know,” said the soldier, “but I am here to train you.”

“Well,” said the little girl, “that is no very hard task.” And they fought until her blood stained the snow beneath her the color of her hair, and she returned to the small room without supper for her failure.

When the evening came, he was led to the outer chamber. Just as he was going to lie down, one of the girls brought him a cup of water; but the soldier threw it all away secretly, taking care not to drink a drop. Then he sat, and waited, listening and watching carefully.

The girls were silent for a long while, barely a breath to be heard or a rustling of fabric, and suddenly there was a noise, a huff of breath and the pattering of near-silent feet on the cold floor. He waited until the other room was still, before silently moving from his own. He entered the girls’ room silently and found a tunnel under one of the mattresses on the floor. He jumped into the tunnel and followed the girls. He took care to be silent, his eyes adjusting automatically to the darkness, for the girls were well trained despite their age. After a long period of time, he came to the end of the tunnel, and was surprised to find there was no one waiting there as guard. He exited slowly and found himself in a grove of trees; and the leaves were silver and glittered with freshly fallen snow. The soldier listened through the harsh wind and heard a tree branch snap not far in the distance, and he followed. After a few minutes the forest cleared onto a great lake of ice; and at the side of the lake there lay eleven little girls, lying in the snow, staring unblinkingly up at the cloudy night. The twelfth girl appeared next to him, the same girl from before, a bruise on her chin and her tattered clothes refusing to shield her body from the wind.

_You let me follow you, _his eyes accused.

Her lips twitched, _Yes._

“Why?” He asked aloud.

“To see the sky,” she responded. They stood in silence for a moment, watching the other girls lay in the snow, free from the eyes but still bound to their prison, for in a few hours, they will return.

_You could run_, he thought to her without feeling.

_Where? There’s no point_, she responded, shaking her head minutely. _You would chase us if we ran. _

_Yes_, he stared into her eyes, watching her fiery red hair blow in the breeze.

“In another life, we are princesses.” She spoke harshly, though not loud enough to carry farther from his ears. “And across the lake is a castle, with music of horns and trumpets, and we cross the lake, and we dance. We dance every night, and on those nights we are free. Free to come back in the morning where our father the King locks us in a gold plated bedroom with twelve soft beds and drawers and boxes filled with fine clothes. Until the next night when we are free again, to be locked away and escape and to return every single night until we are found out and one of us is gone and we never dance again.”

“Gone,” he repeats, staring over the lake and trying to imagine it. The castle with the lights and the music, and gets a flash of warmth and color and laugher so intense it almost takes his breath away. It’s just a flash. He knows he must report it to his handler, that he’s malfunctioning by remembering. He doesn’t want to.

“One of us will die for this,” she says simply. And he’s not surprised, not really, but he wishes he was. She stares at the other girls, the other girls that might have been her sisters, who never can be again, not after this. _Love is for children_, the man spat in her face when she refused to fight Yelena. She wondered what a child was, watching girls barely able to walk trained to hold a weapon properly. She stares at the other girls, and then she turns to him, “Can it be me?”

.***

In the morning, he reports. And as he’s sentencing a child to death, he thinks of the fantasy the sun-headed girl told him. Where even with all the money in the world, they were still imprisoned. Life is nothing but layers of imprisonment.

They line the girls up in the clearing still stained with her blood, and tell him to choose. _The weakest_, they whisper. _Cull the herd_. And he stares at her, the fiery little girl, probably the fifth youngest out of the twelve, and sees it in her eyes. The desperation to be free.

He raises his metal arm and points at the girl who’s a year older than the redhead, a girl who’s lagging slightly in her defense, who cannot calculate her opponent’s moves enough to strategize, who fights like a wolf cornered when she needs to strike precisely like a snake, and he can’t look at her. At either of them. The girls he’s sentencing to death.

He raises his head when the handler drags the girl by the collar into the center of the clearing and catches the redhead’s eyes. They burn with fury hot enough to melt the stars. _I will _never _forgive you._

_Don’t worry, _he thought to himself. She has the best chance; he attempts to defend. She has the best chance to survive, to escape, to beat the system. Wholly selfish on his part, wanting her to make it, because maybe if she does, he can too. Could he have even chosen anyone but the weakest, though? Defied his orders?

Imprisoned in his own mind.

He closes his eyes. The gun fires. _I won’t either._

**Author's Note:**

> Mikhail Glinka: Ruslan and Lyudmila, Overture (1842)


End file.
